Inbound Marketing Strategy: what it means and how to do it

Inbound marketing: are probably two words you find just about everywhere, hanging out on the Web or reading some online guide on how to get more customers for your business.

As you say, it's actually not really clear to you at 100% what it means?

In fact, it falls among those English terms that are now popularized in our language, but whose meaning we sometimes ignore (or, at least, we always have some small doubt about it).

Perfect, if you find yourself in it, you are reading the right article: you are about to find out what inbound marketing is, what it is and how it works, as well as the methodology behind it and its main benefits.

Happy reading!

What is inbound marketing

Okay, let's assume that you have your own business (online or offline, it doesn't matter) and that you are trying to figure out how to find new customers and keep them, with the goal of Increase sales and grow your business.

There are two main avenues you can take: bombard your audience with ads and banner ads, hoping that there will be someone out there who decides to click on them at some point, or offer people something interesting, to the point of Invite them in a spontaneous way to come to you.

Because think about it: your customers are such from the moment you provide them with solutions to their problems.

Do you agree?

Here, this is exactly what inbound marketing is all about: provide the solutions your target audience is looking for.

So what does "inbound" mean? Literally, it means "inward"-referring to anything that is moving inward, precisely, or coming from another direction.

But what exactly is it then?

Inbound marketing is a real business method and a strategic approach, which has a specific goal: to attract customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them, which represent solutions to their needs and thus stimulate long-term relationships.

Such solutions can come in the form of different types of content on various platforms designed to make you connect more "spontaneously" and naturally with potential buyers at different stages of the buying journey.

In fact, the idea is to accompany people throughout the entire process, from the moment they first come in contact with your brand until they become loyal customers, rather than having to seek them out and compete for attention through outbound marketing.

In other words, inbound marketing focuses on what the audience wants, and that is why it is effective: it makes it easier for them to find the solution to their needs.

Developing an Inbound Marketing Strategy

If you decide to create an inbound marketing strategy for your company, you should start by focusing on a three-step framework: planning, analysis, review.

Let's look at these three steps one by one.

#1 Planning

Before developing any marketing materials and disseminating them, you should take time to devise a proper plan. Determine what your ultimate goal is, whether it is to sell a particular product, gain new customers for a service, or increase the brand awareness For a given target audience.

Once you know what you want to achieve with your campaign, you will be able to decide what to offer the potential customer with a view to achieving that goal.

#2 Analysis

Establishing a plan will make it easier for you to analyze the impact your actions have in your target market. It is important in this case to check all the data relating to the KPI most important, such as how many views an article on your blog receives, how many readers have made click on your ad, whether or not sales have increased since the campaign began.

Remember to set incremental goals and benchmarks in the planning stage to give these figures comparative value.

#3 Revision.

After you have implemented your marketing plan and collected data to determine its effectiveness, it is time to reconsider your strategy and assess its strengths and weaknesses.

You can take everything you have learned and apply it to an even more impactful campaign, rather than starting from scratch each time. Keeping records and making thorough reports is vital to using this learning process to your advantage.

How inbound marketing works: the method

The inbound methodology then allows you to grow your business by building meaningful and lasting relationships With consumers and potential customers. It is about valuing and helping these people achieve their goals at any stage of their relationship with you.

How come? Because when your clients succeed, you succeed.

While marketing so-called "outbound" goes in search of those who might be interested in your offer, inbound marketing focuses on visibility and making sure they come to you.

How?

Using different techniques: content marketing, blog, SEO, social media...

One of the first things to consider is to understand your audience and what they expect from you as a brand.

You may prefer a content-focused approach, publishing posts and videos that align with key customer interests; or you may opt for a lead nurturing approach, which focuses on building a connection through a mutual exchange.

But always with a lowest common denominator: being geared toward building brand awareness, do lead generation And develop relationships.

The goal is to attract new potential customers to your company, interact with them on a large scale, and satisfy them individually.

Specifically, to do this, the inbound method is based on four steps:

the phase of attraction (attract), focused on theattract potential customers Through targeted marketing;
the conversion phase (convert), in which you turn your users into leads, i.e., contacts;
the closing phase (close), where you focus on closing the sale;
the final stage (delight), where you consolidate the relationship with all those who have interacted with you, to increase the loyalty.

All four stages are crucial: let us briefly look at them in detail.

The 4 stages of inbound marketing

#1 Attract

At this stage the goal is. Attract your potential customers to your website, with the idea that they will then become regular users and eventually active buyers.

This is through valuable content and conversations that meet their needs, problems and desires and make you a trusted brand they want to interact with.

So green light for the production of high-quality content (also disseminated through the webinar, for example), to search engine optimization (SEO) and at good social media marketing.

#2 Convert

Once visitors have found your website, you need to build a relationship with them and turn them into leads, that is, in contacts.

Gathering information from potential customers is the key to initiating an interaction, helping to keep them engaged and leading to a successful conversion.

The methods you can use are those that allow you to create a connection with users by providing something of value for which they are willing to share their personal information with you (usually, name and address email).

Necessary tools in this case are therefore the landing page, where users can download your offer or sign up for your service, and the call to action, with which you communicate the next action to be taken.

#3 Close

The "closing" phase is where you drive leads to the final purchase decision.

The components of this step include the lead nurturing (through various means, such as thee-mail, you can nurture potential customers at every stage of their decision-making journey), marketing automation, and customer relationship management (CRM) software to better organize and access their data.

#4 Delight

Even after making the sale, you must continue to engage and satisfy your customer base to build relationships with them and Turn them into promoters of your business.

This phase carries considerable weight in inbound methodology, although it is sometimes easily overlooked: yet, retaining a customer is easier than constantly acquiring new ones.

So it's a matter of incentivizing the exchange on social and responding to interactions with useful and supportive information, showing that you care about your audience and are not just trying to sell; using loyalty programs and surveys to support, assist and satisfy customers by gathering feedback is another great way to strengthen relationships.

The Flywheel Strategy (aka.)

The Flywheel Strategy is a business model proposed and adopted by Hubspot to show the momentum your organization can achieve by offering a certain kind of customer experience and giving it top priority.

This is a very simple version of the actions to take when dealing with inbound marketing: it starts from the premise that the goal of every company should be to have happy and satisfied customers, and therefore you need to be proactive in creating the best user experience possible.

The flywheel strategy takes the four steps of the inbound method (see above) one step further: it emphasizes the importance of using them to create a positive feedback loop between your business, customers, and marketing efforts.

The main idea is that satisfied customers are more likely to become advocates for a company, thus creating a self-sustaining cycle of the steps listed above, which can attract new customers and lead to increased sales, as well as build trust with the public, leading to higher retention rates.

It is different from traditional marketing approaches in that it focuses on building relationships with customers by creating an exceptional experience through personalized interactions, useful content, and targeted marketing campaigns.By building strong relationships, you can create a system where each interaction creates momentum that drives growth and success over time.

So how does it work concretely?

You start by attracting your audience to your site through various marketing techniques. Then you interact with them with valuable content, turn them into customers by closing the sale, and finally, you "pamper" them with exceptional customer service.

When customers find success and share that success with others, it attracts new potential customers to your organization, creating a self-sustaining loop.

The flywheel strategy helps keep your marketing efforts focused on your ideal customer, resulting in a more personalized and fulfilling experience for them.

The benefits of an inbound marketing strategy

Inbound marketing is so powerful because you have the benefit of giving consumers exactly the answers they are looking for, at the precise moment they need them. This builds trust, reputation and authority In whatever niche you are practicing this strategy.

If executed correctly, inbound marketing can therefore produce significantly better results than a more traditional approach.

Here are the main advantages:

optimizes social media shares, brand awareness and search engine optimization efforts;
provides your potential customers with all the information they need to make a buying decision anytime, anywhere;
allows for a more streamlined and targeted advertising spend, so you can save money and experience a ROI higher over time;
gives you more trust and credibility (when you allow customers to do their own research and find you organically, you find yourself more trustworthy than an advertisement that says "Buy it now!");
creating useful content and social sharing help reduce the amount of risk consumers associate with your brand;
attracts quality traffic and leads (with a more targeted and informed approach, you are able to attract contacts who are more likely to be interested in your solutions);
provides you with opportunities for learning and evolution (interacting with customers on social media and listening to their conversations, questions and feedback helps you understand how to improve your products and services).

Inbound Marketing FAQs

How and when did inbound marketing develop?

Inbound marketing grew out of the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web. Before the Internet, people discovered a brand through television, radio ads, billboards, or by talking to a salesperson. Only as a result of the connections offered by the digital network did consumers gain the ability to research products and companies themselves.

At first, marketers focused on creating Web sites that showcased products, using outbound strategies to reach consumers directly. The shift to inbound marketing came when marketers realized that it was not just about promoting the product-they needed to engage potential customers throughout the process leading to purchase, providing answers to their questions and solutions to their problems or needs.

What is the difference between inbound and outbound marketing?

Essentially, the difference is that in outbound marketing the interaction between the customer and the company is initiated by the latter, while in inbound marketing it is the consumer who takes the first step (thanks to the appropriate stimuli).

Thus, outbound marketing is any type of marketing in which the company actively seeks to reach the consumer through targeted display ads, direct mail, or "cold" calls.

Instead, inbound marketing involves publishing information so that the potential customer can find it on his or her own. They could be contained, for example, in a blog, a web page, or a resource available on a landing page (obviously the SEO is essential).

The other major vehicle for inbound marketing is social media, which allows a brand to easily interact with and engage customers.

Which is the best between outbound and inbound strategy?

Sometimes, inbound is considered better for B2B marketing, while outbound for B2C (this is because in the B2C market the sales cycle is generally shorter).

However, inbound marketing can work for both cases: in B2C scenarios, for example, it is very useful when the path to purchase is particularly complex and customers have to do a lot of research or consider many factors before making a decision.

That said, it is also true that most companies include both inbound and outbound in their marketing strategies. For example, there may be times when a brand wants to send a message to a consumer in a direct way to get their attention, especially if it needs to create awareness or talk about a brand new product. It may then advertise to initiate interaction and then use inbound to provide additional information and insights.

There are strengths in both inbound and outbound marketing and situations where one or the other will be the better option. Companies often succeed when they use a combination of both tactics to provide quality content when customers research and ask questions, or contact them directly when they want information about a specific product.

What is the difference between inbound marketing and content marketing ?

The content marketing is something that can be used within an inbound marketing strategy and is part of it.

However, it is also possible to do content marketing outside of an inbound campaign: think, for example, of the case of a B2B company that has a limited number of customers and does not need to do large-scale marketing, as it only needs to reach them directly. It could then develop a lot of content and then distribute it all using outbound techniques.

In general, we can say that all types of marketing feed on the dissemination of valuable content, while the latter is only a part of inbound marketing.

How can you implement an inbound strategy?

The first thing you need to do is to understand the customer journey: you need to be aware of what questions they are asking and what stage of their journey they are in, so that you can create content that addresses their needs or offers a solution to their problem. Once you know what types of content you can share to engage users, you can start creating it.

If you look at sales channeling, inbound marketing tends to be more on top: its goal is to reach consumers at the beginning of the journey and then guide them through each stage. And the three main ways you can make that content easily visible in their eyes are SEO, blogging and social media.

Inbound marketing is more passive than outbound marketing and may not produce immediate results. To determine if an inbound marketing strategy is effective, you must as always monitor the right metrics (views, leads, conversion rate, etc.).

In fact, the best way to ensure that inbound marketing works effectively is to measure it and understand what works and what doesn't.

What mistakes might you make with inbound marketing?

Being too product-focused is a classic mistake: a campaign that is too self-promotional at the beginning of the channeling runs the risk of driving customers away rather than attracting them. At the research stage, better to provide more general information; only later in the journey can it make sense to show the potential buyer how a product will meet his or her needs.

What is the future of inbound marketing?

Increasing use Of artificial intelligence (AI) makes it easier for companies to match the right people with the right content.

Not only that: artificial intelligence can also help drive consumer engagement further down the channel. While inbound is in fact often associated with the initial part, that of acquiring new leads, it must be remembered that these leads have not yet completed the journey: it is necessary to continue to cultivate contacts and offer the right content to accompany them to the sale. Artificial intelligence can then help manage leads and continue to engage the customer beyond the first single interaction.

Conclusion

Inbound marketing works because it is based entirely on what customers want and what they are looking for at that moment.

It's not about "bombarding" your audience with your brand, it's about being present and ready when they are looking for the things you offer. Successful inbound marketing occurs when you produce high-quality content that your target audience actually interacts with.

Before closing, always remember one important thing: It's never just about sales.

It is a strategy that has to do with Being concretely useful: your inbound marketing content must have within it the potential to help people solve their problems, generate repeat traffic to your Web site, and stimulate promotion of the word of mouth For your brand.

If you do it right, the resulting brand awareness and engagement will result in sales conversions and strong, lasting relationships with your customers.